


A Heart of Snow

by AngryMuffin (FREAKYPUMPKIN)



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Fantasy, Fictional World, Found Family, Gay Male Character, Grim Reapers, M/M, Wednesdays are bad luck, Werewolves, death is a dog that deserves all the love, enemies to annoyed acquaintances, family love, fantasy with modern setting, gay female character, idiots falling in love, mlm, nobody is straight, painful humor, random flamingos, wlw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26514115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FREAKYPUMPKIN/pseuds/AngryMuffin
Summary: In his former life, the werewolf Kim worked as a sort of good hitman for a maybe not so legal mob boss, but ends up getting killed after going against orders and not killing a certain target. Kim's mother Sanja, a Reaper, brings him back to life, and now he gets a job as the assistant of his mother's girlfriend, who watches over the scared bonds between wolves.But living a second life is not all roses and sunshine, it's mostly a lot of readjusting and throwing up a lot, whenever Kim gets too close to memories right before his death.And running into the target he refused to kill back then again, certainly does not help the situation.Fabian is a lone wolf, literally. He is also a thief. He is hired to break into a museum, not to steal a painting, but to retrieve something from their underground archives. Just another Tuesday until he runs into the hitman, who is responsible for the scar on his shoulder. Said hitman claims for their meeting to be a complete coincidence, which Fabian refuses to believe -- and yeah, maybe there were feeling involved, that he'd dubbed 'stupid' back then already, but that are still there and maybe are the reason, why he's still so butt-hurt about that shooting incident.





	1. In the beginning ...

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All characters are mine. All of the plot is mine.  
> DO NOT REPOST OR TRANSLATE TO ANY OTHER SITE! (I will hunt you down if you do.) 
> 
> Feel free to ask questions, if you're confused, it's been ages since I last wrote something coherent, so I'm quite a bit rusty.  
> English is not my first language, but I try to write proper sentences.

“Someone very wise once said, the world would end on a Wednesday.  
And I think, it explains the irony of us quite well,  
that we killed them before anybody thought of asking  
which Wednesday that would be  
or  
which world they meant.“

(K.K., note on the front page of ‘The light and dark values of small Wars‘)


	2. Not-A-Wednesday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meddling with the soul of your dead son is something, you should have a serious discussion with your boss about.

“Not all stories are meant to get an ending.“  
(CrescentMOON, third day of hearings in the trial #34672309, page 3.)

The cat went first along the small steps of the wound staircase, and Sanja followed her up to the only tower of the castle. Zava‘s office was at the top, and whoever wanted to reach it, had to follow the cat. If you rushed along and passed by the cat, maybe bored by her measured steps, she’d stop and watch you fall into a hole so deep you would need three mortal lifetimes to measure it. Though it was said, that measuring a hole’s depth while falling has not been very successful in the past.  
If you’d be foolish enough to start climbing the steps without the cat waiting for you at the bottom, you’d be caught walking those same stairs for at least two and a half eternities without reaching anything. Not Zava’s office, not the sky, not even the top of the tower.  
So it always was, and every Reaper knew it and met the questioning dark gaze of the cat with patience. The cat’s name was Kimsara, but she never listened, so calling for her at the bottom of the stairs upon seeing her empty place, was to no avail.   
Rumor had it though, that knowing the cat’s name could have a positive impact on her walking pace.  
Zava‘s office had three windows and one door, made from metal dark as night. Sanja took a deep, steadying breath. Then she squared her shoulders and raised a hand to knock. It shook … just a bit. She wasn’t scared of Zava, not exactly. She was scared of the change, that had happened and would continue to happen … just a bit.   
“Come on in.“  
The door had no handle, so Sanja pressed her fingertips against the cold metal until it gave in and swung open. Slowly, almost with a certain sense of laziness the door revealed a small room with a desk. Behind the desk sat a woman with eyes white like snow and a smile faint like the wind calling outside of the castle walls.   
“Sanja.“ Zava’s smile grew with the howling around the tower, yet it was warmer than the cold Sanja recalled from the woods. The cat entered first, and Sanja followed. On soft and silent paws Kimsara jumped onto the desk and found her place underneath the lamp, that shown warm, yellow light on night-black-black fur.  
“Zava.“ She nodded curtly, maintaining eye contact because it was said, that looking away meant your tongue was heavy with lies. But nobody knew if the creator of that fashion had looked away while saying it. “You wanted to see me?“  
Zava leaned forward, her hands brushing across unwritten words on blank paper.   
“I did. I want to talk to you.“  
Sanja didn’t take a seat. It was considered bad manners. Maybe. Maybe not anymore. In the Kingdoms of Death these small aspects had a habit of changing sometimes twice within one night.   
“About the soul?“  
“About the soul.“  
“I paid for it.“  
Zava’s gaze flickered to the delicate chain wrapped around Sanja’s wrist, now empty of anything but one lonely coin. “I know.“  
From then onward two kinds of silence stretched between them, one thoughtful and calm, the other tense and shivering with cold resolve. Sana broke it first, because she was scared of the way Zava would break it in her own way. Yet she whispered it, knowing the weight of what she had actually done still stood between them unspoken, words piled upon words, upon consequences nobody could calculate yet.   
“There’s no law against paying for a soul with the proper currency.“  
Zava pursed her lips. “Not after the body has died, no.“ She didn’t seem angry and the absentminded way in which one of her hands found Kimsara‘s fur, brushing through silken strands of hair, only aided to that impression.  
“Then why am I here?“ A shiver of uncertainty crawled across her skin, settled in her bones and every shard of ice, that she called her heart. Zava rested her chin on top of crossed fingers, placing both elbows on her desk and just looked at Sanja. The cat gave a disgruntled meow, yet remained silent after that. Just watching, watching, watching with blue and yellow eyes.  
Still, Sanja found, nobody was silent like Zava could be. Her silence was heavy and warm, was cold and calculating, dark and light, and soft like it was was harsh against the skin. Sanja’s shoulders grew tense from her own silence, from the weight of change in everything around her. She’d made a decision by paying for that soul and another one by not stripping it of former memories, and while she didn’t regret it, it still was something she had to carry, alone.   
“You expect to be punished.“ Zava’s smile had melted into a thin, serious line. Maybe there was worry in her white eyes, maybe not. Things like that could be easily a trick of light. “Why?“  
Sanja swallowed heavily. “I broke no law by doing what I did.“   
The words rang hollow, empty, filled with nothing but her own still unarticulated fear of … something.   
She was right in the way, that the actual laws of the High Court were always far away right here, with Zava so close. They appeared wispy, faded so much over time, with no more weight than a single snowflake‘s cold kiss in the midst of a storm, utterly unimportant in a cruel and fearful way. In the Kingdoms of Death they had rules, unwritten, unspoken, yet lived by. The laws were a silver cage around each Kingdom, barely touching the borders, just enough to hold them accountable for the souls each Reaper collected, but nothing more. The rules were the stones they built their castles with, the wind around their spires, the roots at the core of everything on every day. Nobody outside the cage would be ever able to know their taste and the claws of guilt if you broke them.   
The two main laws issued by the High Court were:  
1\. Reapers weren’t allowed to trade the souls for anything else than their own currency of Moonlight Coins.   
2\. They weren’t allowed to trade the coins for anything from outside of the twelve Kingdoms.   
If a Reaper broke one of these two laws, not even the rulers of the Twelve Kingdoms could protect them from punishment by the High Court. But there hadn’t been a case of Reapers breaking those laws in 30-something-maybe100 years. Sanja had broken neither of them.  
One of the main rules though, that instilled way more respect into everybody living the Kingdoms of Death, was that each soul collected had to be stripped clean from memories of their former life before getting back in line to be reborn.   
And that was the one Sanja had … well, one could say, creatively avoided.   
The soul in question had the code 4.5m66. It was first born, around 25 years ago, and not by natural cause and also hadn’t gotten a body through natural development either.   
(Sanja had given him the name Kim later on, because yelling a number code across the playground did not go over well with the other parents, and Lia had advised against Sanja’s attempt to explain the situation to them.)   
Kim’s soul had been birthed by just one mortal soul out of burning passion for their craft, which technically put him under the same jurisdiction as other immortal souls, that usually had only one source of creation. Yet his body had been created the Reaper-way of combining blood and one element. Yet it wasn’t the blood of one ruler, which would appoint the soul to one of the Kingdoms, but with the combined blood of Sanja and Lia, who again, was part of another court. And that didn’t even scratch the surface of how a soul usually wasn’t even involved in the birth of a Reaper. Reapers like Sanja herself lived from the blood of their ruler, that grew into a heart, and a body, formed from whatever element the ruler chose. (Zava created her Reapers from ice and snow and therefore they collected the souls of those killed in cold areas.)  
It was a bit of a legal nightmare and so far, nobody had challenged Sana’s position as Kim’s sort-of-mother. Nobody knew how to classify Kim and left them alone. Only now, that things had happened the way they’d happened, was Sanja scared of the laws and rules, possibly finding a way to drive a knife into into their life together. It didn’t matter, how many times Lia had assured her, that it would end up taking ages just to sort out who would be in charge of this case between Fullmoon, the High Court, and Zava anyway.   
“I broke no law,“ Sanja repeated and Zava nodded in agreement. She took a deep breath. “But I went against your rules.“  
Again, Zava nodded, though not removing her head from her crossed fingers.   
“You didn’t strip the memories.“  
“I did not.“  
“Why not? After you got it back from one of Castor’s Reapers, you could have marked it and followed up on it when it got reborn. It’s not impossible to track souls through multiple life spans.“  
Sanja bit her lower lip. She knew that. Zava knew, that she knew it. Yet she hadn’t followed that much more cleaner path. Why? It was easy really, but terrifying at the same time. She’d been selfish, plain and simple. If she’d stripped Kim’s memories, he would have been reborn safely, had been officially sorted into the ranks of mortal souls with mortal bodies, traces of her and Lia’s blood gone and everything.   
But he would have forgotten her. He would have had no recollection of their time together. He would have had another family, a mortal one, a normal one, a biological one.   
“I didn’t want to loose him.“ Sanja’s gaze fell to the ground in front of her feet. Her shoulders tensed, and unspoken angry tears vibrated in her chest. “I didn’t want to loose everything that was connected to him ... I-“ She snapped her mouth shut, as she realized that the tears seeped into her words, covering every letter with thin sparks of half-formed regret. Lifting her eyes again, she faced Zava’s calm calculating silence and reined in her emotions. This was not the place nor the time. She would talk to Lia about these things again, in a quiet moment, with as much of the other woman’s calm and healing silence as she needed.  
“You’re aware of the risks that exist for a soul being reborn with their memories still attached?“ It was a sober question of simple clinical interest, only when cut open deep enough, worry could be found between the words - and only those who knew Zava long enough, knew where to place the blade for that.   
“I am.“  
Memories, good or bad, were linked to experiences, that left a physical imprint in the soul - putting pressure on it. The physical body was a tool to create a connection with other souls, which helped withstanding that pressure. The reason for the stripping of memories was, that a body and soul had to “match up“ in their history of imprints left, and combining a soul, that is already under a the pressure of memories and experiences, with a body, that had not lived through said experiences, created a dissonance between body and soul, and it further complicated the process of connecting with other souls to take that pressure off. This way there was the constant risk of either body or soul breaking first and the whole existence simply dying again. It also lessened the chance of a healthy rebirth after that one.  
At least that was the theory for mortal souls in mortal bodies, created by natural means. Kim did not entirely fit into that category, which was why Sanja had taken that risk, had allowed her selfishness to run free.   
“Death due to body-soul-dissonance is a painful one.“  
“I know … we talked about what to do, when it comes to that.“ Sanja swallowed hard. She’d cried a lot in the last two weeks.   
Now Zava leaned back in her chair and let her hands rest lightly on the armrests right and left. “We?“ Her lips curled into a smile, that treaded on the fine line between amusement and professional interest.   
“Yes, we.“   
“‘The soul and you’ or ‘the wolf and you‘?“   
“The soul has a name, as well as the wolf.“  
Zava’s smile grew wide enough, that one could have even called it a grin.   
“True, and if I now remember correctly, the soul is a wolf as well?“   
“He is.“  
A born wolf this time, as Lia had bitten him in his first life. A way of adoption, one could argue.   
“And you talked?“  
“We did.“  
“How is he holding up?“  
“He throws up a lot. But it’s getting better.“  
Zava rubbed her index finger against her chin. “Not unusual for a case of a dissonance.“ Her gaze flickered to one of the big windows in the office. The sky outside was of a generic grey color, slowly darkening with the approaching night. When Zava‘s eyes found Sanja’s again, something had shifted - in the room, between them, around the castle.   
“I’m not going to punish you.“  
Sanja went still, so very, very still.   
“You won’t?“, she echoed.   
“I won’t, because no matter how things turn out, the hardships in front of you will be enough punishment in my opinion.“ Zava nodded, no trace of kindness in her eyes. “I called you in to make sure you understand the risk you took and the possible consequences that risk could entail.“ She leaned forward in her chair. “I also called you in, to officially inform you, that by your current status of coins, you will be delegated to caring for animal soul for the next decade or so. We will see how things progress … and where maybe extra hands will be needed.“  
Then Zava took a deep breath and something else crept into the room, something much heavier, much darker, much older, something eerily familiar, which Sanja had felt coming for the past 25 years … or something close to that. Kimsara even lifted her head from where it had rested on top of her front paws, her whispers twitching.  
“… I also have to inform you, that the date for your trial about the extended lifespan of the soul with the code 61m9 has been set for today in 3 years.“  
The silence that followed was sharp with shredded edges, a storm frozen solid right between them. Sanja swallowed heavily.   
Three years before she had to step in front of the High Court.   
The first year to find somebody to speak for her in court.  
The second year to decide who would wait for her at the end of the hearing.  
And the final one for the travel to the Court’s halls with both people.  
That‘s how it always was.  
“Noted,“ she said, as no more words were needed. After that she expected to be dismissed, but Kimsara did not raise from her place on Zava’s desk and Zava herself only kept her thoughtful gaze trained on Sanja. Nobody was silent like her, calm like her, and it was said, that Mistress Night herself had fallen for Zava’s stillness and silence during a storm ridden night.  
When her voice eventually combed through the silence, it was a work of art to witness.  
“Two decisions, one filled with selfless joy, the other with selfish grief … yet both of them bad ones. You seem to have a talent for it.“ She spoke with a smile, with calm judgement, and just a tiny whisper of genuine fascination.   
Something inside of Sanja went hard and cold when she heard those words, saw that smile and felt that fascination crawling across her skin.   
“As long as you can look at yourself in the mirror every morning, it wasn‘t a bad decision.“   
Zava weaved her fingers together. “You have a lot of mirrors at home?“ Her tone did not waver, did not give any indication of what she was thinking, but Sanja liked to believe, that there was a soft and gentle smile dancing in her eyes.  
“Every shard of ice is a myriad of mirrors.“  
“Of course“, Zava whispered. Then she tilted her head. “You’re dismissed.“   
At the last word, Kimsara rose from her place underneath the reading lamp and stretched her back, while Sanja patiently waited to jump down from the desk. Respectfully she nodded her goodbye to Zava. “May we not meet on a Wednesday the next time.“  
“Let’s pray for a Monday“, Zava replied, an real smile curving her thin lips.  
The door swung open again at the tap of Kimsara’s paw and presented cold, grey stones, with one window on the opposite wall. Outside the sky was now dark-dark-blue, with stars blinking in the distance. It had a sobering effect on Sanja‘s nerves and once again the feeling of having made the right decision settled in her gut.   
The cat went first, and Sanja followed.


End file.
